Help SimCity Sell Your Eyeballs to Nissan

Nissan would like to bring "a one-time wave of happiness" to your city. Image courtesy EA

Your SimCity just got sponsored, courtesy of Nissan.

Plunk down a Nissan LEAF charging station in your city, and it will “provide happiness to the Sims that use it and a onetime wave of happiness to the nearby businesses,” EA announced via its official SimCity forums on Tuesday.

In-game advertising is nothing new, of course. James Pond 2 had built-in advertisements for Penguin biscuits as early as 1991, and the sidelines in sports videogames have for years been just as plastered with ads as their real-world counterparts. Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign even took to the streets of Burnout: Paradise with big virtual billboards.

But it’s rare for an in-game advertisement to actually have a direct impact on gameplay in a game. “Happiness” is one of the many factors that players have to manage as mayors of their virtual metropolis in SimCity. Now, use of the Nissan Leaf product results directly in a smoother gameplay experience. Use Nissan, win at SimCity.

I’d like to think that the implications of businesses only getting a “one-time” boost of happiness from being near a Nissan LEAF charging station is subtle commentary from the SimCity devs about the futility of futurism as a solution to human grief and suffering.